Greg Stolze: Forums

OK, seriously.

It's not like he's got a dozen different things going on at any given moment.

BUT....

If I had a Greg Stolze Genie to fulfill my wishes.... I'd want a sci-fi ORE version of Reign.
Cool psi- and tech powers. Alien races that defy description. The farthest reaches of an uncharted galaxy to explore and challange. Incredibly weird wardrobe choices.

I want all the strange and fantastic Stolze madness distilled and made form filtered through the far future (or past).

Just sayin'.

I'd love to do a SF ORE, but... I dunno. I don't have the Original Idea that unlocks it, y'know? Anything I'd do right now would be a pastiche of a bunch of other source material. It wouldn't have the 'WOW.' I'm reading "Wired for War" -- maybe that'll light the firecracker. But right now, I don't have a ripe idea for SF.

-G.

There's still plenty of stuff to write for Reign also: scenarios, adventure outlines, cultures, etc.

Mass Effect ORE?

Since my family loves Star Wars, I have been modifying the Star ORE mini-system for our own use. I would love to see Greg's ideas (I have NO idea how he thinks of his settings!) on Sci-fi. Even with the setting aside (or at least on the back burner) what would the mechanics look like? How would starship combat look? Would capital ships or the Enterprise use Company rules? How does one handle the massive amount of damage that a laser blaster can dish out to unarmored PC's? How would one handle light/no gravity?

As for the psi-powers or force or whatever, the current sorcery rules have worked well for us: Change Sorcery to Use the Force. Instead of buying spells with certain Intensity levels, you buy psi/force powers with Intensity levels. We added Stability checks into the Force powers and we added Will Power Cost for some of the more devastating powers to cut down on the amount of times someone Force Lightnings an opponent.

It has been hardest for me to deal with vehicular combat... What would Greg say? One can only wait and hope...
Since Greg has come up with an original setting for Reign, with unique and strangely familiar situations, I would be eager to read of his sci-fi setting.

Personally, I'd do the following for starships. If you've played the D6 Star Wars by West End Games, this may sound familiar.

Take the "Bigness" rules from the upcoming Monsters and other Childish Things supplement, Bigger Bads. Here's the link.

Now, we merge that with the Scale rules from the D6 version, and we have the following:

Each vehicle--land speeder to capital ship--would be in one of the following "scale" ranges:

• Character
• Speeder
• Walker
• Starfighter
• Capital

The smaller scale combatant gets the following: you "upgrade" one die in your attack/defense pool per scale difference. "Upgraded" dice go from normal, to expert, to master.

The bigger scale combatant gets the following: +2 AR and +2 damage for each scale difference.

This means that, if a TIE fighter and a PC attack each other, that PC upgrades one die from their attack and defense pools to a master die, and one die to an expert die--or if they already have an expert die, it becomes another master die. The TIE fighter, on the other hand, gets +6 AR, and +6 to damage done. So even one hit--at a measly 2x1--would do 8 damage, plus weapon mod!

For light gravity, give a die or two bonus to coordination/body rolls. For no gravity, give a die penalty, or maybe a difficulty, to the same rolls. This penalty can be removed with the appropriate esoteric discipline.



That sounds about right. Since I'm a bit of a Star Wars junkie, I'd go into a bit more detail. Have the three Force skills, control, sense, and alter. But that's just me.



See my above on vehicular combat.

Hope that helps you!

TBP

I've poked and prodded at starship (and sailing ship) combat in some notes, but never gotten anything I felt was really 'killer app'. The idea that ship-to-ship weapons are overkill against wee targets is solid, I think -- if you can make a called shot to location 10 with a -4d penalty, you deserve to kill a guy with one blast from your TIE fighter's guns.

The ship fightin' rules I'd always dinked around with in my mind were card based with a hex grid, with a ship diagram like the wound silhouette (like an SSD from Starfleet Battles -- anyone remember Starfleet Battles?) Really, SFB influenced a lot of my thinking because it was fun, but SLOOOOOOWWWW. Energy allocation was 10% of the fun and 80% of the time, so I was trying to find a way to do that on the fly. Maybe some kind of counter system...

The thought that pops into my head at this exact second, though, is a card based system. The ship you have determines the initial contents of your deck. The captain's skill determines how many cards you can play (or draw? or both?) in a turn, while the ship's condition determines how many cards you can have in your hand. Now here's the tricky part (courtesy of Bohnanza!, the most riveting game of legume farming EVAR) -- every card has a blue side and a red side. When you play a card, you flip it over and put it at the bottom of your opponent's deck, so eventually your options are all based on what your enemy has done.

I dunno. Maybe too complicated. But maybe there's something there. Reading "Wired for War" has given me some interesting thoughts on SF that's different from "Transhuman Singularity everyone can do everything thanks to nanites WOOOOO!" What might be fun would be to get some other writers on board, someone like John Snead with hard SF chops, or Mike Lee. I should check out Brad Murray's book too, it's getting all kinds of love...

-G.